Category: Uncategorized
Art as Environmental Leadership: Stacy Levy to receive the Meigs award
October 15, 2018By Christina Catanese, Director of Environmental Art
Every year, the Schuylkill Center gives the Henry Meigs Environmental Leadership Award to a deserving environmental professional for leaving a meaningful and lasting impact on their community and our region, and embodying a spirit of leadership, integrity, and vision.
In twelve years, we’ve never given this honor to an environmental artist—but that changes this year. On November 7th, Stacy Levy will be presented the Meigs award for her pioneering work joining the worlds of art and science throughout her career of creating compelling artwork, both site-specific and gallery-based.
In Levy’s words, she “use[s]…
Andorra’s Lance Butler grows mightly mussels
September 20, 2018
While Roxborough is famously home to numerous civil servants, especially cops and firemen, Andorra’s Lance Butler has among the most unusual city jobs.
He’s growing mussels. Thousands of mussels. To place back into the Schuylkill and Delaware rivers. And it’s surprisingly important work.
A senior scientist in Philadelphia Water’s Office of Watersheds, Lance was staring into a microscope last Thursday afternoon, measuring and assessing the health of baby mussels no larger than a grain of sand. He was sitting in a laboratory, what he calls “a living breathing laboratory,” tucked into the back of the Fairmount Water Works, Philly…
Ingenious Experiments / Creeping Sogginess
August 16, 2018By Kate Farquhar
As a participant in this summer’s Wet Lab exhibit, I received access to the space and tools I needed to start creating a trio of sculptures as part of my LandLab residency this year. Coming into the Schuylkill Center’s gallery space gave me my first chance to connect directly with an audience and gather my materials in one place. As a gesture of inclusion, I wanted to offer something enticing for people to test out alongside me as I worked. Capillary slippers—made from a technical fabric used in green infrastructure—conduct water across their surface using the physics…
The Art of Wood Bending
July 19, 2018By Carolyn Hesse
Carolyn Hesse is a resident artist part of our summer gallery, Wet Lab, a space for artists and Schuylkill Center visitors to explore and reflect on water in a dynamic environment.
For most artists, success is predicated on having enough time to work creatively.
This is true for me as well. Having time to make mistakes—and grow from them—is what drives every endeavor and can be what makes or breaks the spirit. So, to be given the gift of time at the Schuylkill Center was like a jewel that emits light at every angle; a non-objective based chunk…
Thinking Like A Butterfly
June 26, 2018By Mike Weilbacher
It’s high summer, which brings with it erratic weather patterns, fierce storms, rising tides, raging stormwater pouring through our communities, and other climate change concerns. As someone who worries about climate change, I have stumbled upon a powerful way to change the world.
We need to think like butterflies.
Consider the butterfly–born as a humble, often ugly caterpillar. A living weed-whacker, caterpillars plow through living plants, mercilessly devouring leaves, hell-bent on defoliation. Tent caterpillars ravage the Schuylkill Center’s cherry trees every spring; gypsy moths ravage whole landscapes. Last year, I planted a stand of dill to attract…
An Invitation to the Nesting Bird Census
May 31, 2018By Mike Weilbacher
Join us on June 16th for coffee, donuts, and peak birding! The annual Nesting Bird Census is one of the many opportunities to engage in citizen science at the Schuylkill Center.
[caption id="attachment_270046" align="aligncenter" width="300"] Pileated Woodpecker, by Chris Petrak[/caption]
In early May, a small group of us spent a morning walking the Grey Fox loop, the long trail that ventures through diverse habitats meadows—Pine Grove, farms, a stream, and Wind Dance Pond—searching for birds that were then migrating through the Schuylkill Center’s extensive forest. There is a narrow window of opportunity to see them—and our group…
Why I Marched
May 1, 2017By Mike Weilbacher, Executive Director
Today I’m writing as a neighbor and friend, and I’m writing about something personal. On Saturday, under a brutal April sun, itself both oxymoron and bad omen, my wife and I joined more than 200,000 people in Washington, D.C. for the People’s Climate March. It was an extraordinary event, witnessing a rainbow coalition of people from every corner of the country and in every walk of life coming together for action on climate change.
We walked alongside a nurses union from New York, behind the International Brotherhood of Electrical Workers, themselves just behind the Service…
Children Need Nature: Fort building as a way to connect
March 30, 2017By Alyssa Maley, Nature Preschool Teacher
When you think back on your childhood memories what stands out to you? Perhaps it was a less complicated life where you spent most of your day playing outside, when you were not bombarded with technology at the end of your fingertips. More and more parents are actively seeking out educational programs that match this outside nature component of their childhood memories. They are quickly becoming aware of technology, and the sedentary life it provides for their children through interacting with iPads, computers, and gaming systems. The excessive use of technology in the home…
Reflection of Environmental Art and Time: January
January 3, 2017By Liz Jelsomine, Environmental Art & Public Relations Intern
Editor’s note: The Schuylkill Center produced a wall calendar for 2017 in celebration of the environmental art program. Throughout the year, we’ll run a monthly post on our blog highlighting the art works featured in that month of the calendar.
Artist Jake Beckman, LandLab Resident Artist from 2014-2015, sheds light to the often over looked world of forest decomposition in his ongoing installation at the Schuylkill Center, Future Non-Object #1: Sol’s Reprise.
Beckman explored the detritus cycle of a forest and its disruption by invasive earthworms by creating sculptural installations that…
All about our staff vegan challenge
November 3, 2016By Anna Lehr Mueser, Public Relations Manager
Michelle Wilson’s Carbon Corpus, in our fall gallery show Going Up, explores food and carbon – for this conceptual art piece Wilson ate vegan for each week that participants sponsored, essentially selling credits for the carbon saved by eating vegan (estimate at 35 kg of carbon per week of veganism).
Inspired by this, eight of our staff gave veganism a try. Here, they reflect on learning to eat without animal products for a week.
Emily, Public Programs Coordinator
Having been vegetarian in the past, I was not at all worried about missing meat. …
